Old computer parts/OS- only new...

[bgraybr]

I got FreeDOS to install on my Thinkpad- and it works flawlessly except for the fact that there is no sound (because I obviously don't have a Sound Blaster sound card) or networking (but its DOS so I didn't expect internet anyways). So, I thought it would be cool to build an old computer to run DOS on but instead of building it out of old, decaying parts from fifteen years ago, I want to build something new and shiny. This might be is a stupid question, but is there any company that manufactures older computers/parts/floppy disks/etc. specifically for this purpose? Is it possible to run DOS with sound on a new computer? Or will I have to stick with emulation?

[Maes]

Well, floppy drives and disks are still made new or at least they were until recently, they are the easiest thing to find of all that you mentioned.

Hard disks are a bit of a problem here, as DOS will only natively work with IDE or ST506 controllers (if you haven't heard of them, no problem, they were probably around before you were). If you want to use SATA or SCSI (which might be a real possibility, since IDE drives are phased out of production, even CD-ROM/DVD-ROM units) you will need additional drivers, and thus you'll probably be limited to using FreeDOS or another "advanced" DOS.

As for sound, yeah, there ARE still a few PCI sound cards that claim to be "Soundblaster Pro" compatible and some even have FM sound, but you will need some sort of DOS TSR to actually use them. Not even Creative Labs managed to build a Sound Blaster card for the PCI bus that was actually as compatible and directly usable as the classic ISA ones.

For VGA, I could guarantee that at least older PCI-based S3/Trident videocards and the like will work flawlessly with DOS stuff.

Modern shit like nVidia etc. might still work for VGA/SVGA resolutions, but I have no idea if e.g. CGA modes are still natively supported.

Otherwise, yeah, it's possible to have full-blown DOS on a Pentium 4 machine with relatively new parts, if that's what you want. But it will probably be a waste of power, unless you want to see how fast e.g. DOS-based fractal generators or demonscene stuff can be.

[bgraybr]

Maes said:

As for sound, yeah, there ARE still a few PCI sound cards that claim to be "Soundblaster Pro" compatible and some even have FM sound, but you will need some sort of DOS TSR to actually use them. Not even Creative Labs managed to build a Sound Blaster card for the PCI bus that was actually as compatible and directly usable as the classic ISA ones.

Sound is really the only thing that I was worried about, the Thinkpad is relatively new and everything besides sound and networking works with FreeDOS, the display, hard drive, even the CD drive.

...whats a DOS TSR? In other words, can you explain in simpler terms how I would go about getting a sound card to work?

[Enjay]

TSR - Was an American game publishing company most famous for publishing the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


Ahem

TSR - Terminate and Stay Resident. A little program that runs and returns control back to the OS once it has been run but remains in memory. This used to be used in ye good olde days for things like hotkeys. eg Run your TSR program at startup and it might load a hotkey combination into memory and whenever you press a particular key combination, the computer would do something because the TSR was still in memory wiating for the hotkey press. In this case, however, the function of the TSR program would be analogous to that of a device driver in Windows.

[Maes]

Yeah, many "Soundblaster Compatible" cards of the day weren't actually hardware compatible for what regarded their digital sound part: they needed a device driver that emulated the SB registers, and this resulted in both poor performance, so-so compatibility, and only limited support for SBs capabilities (e.g. many of them are limited to SB 1.0/SB 1.5 specs which means no 44.1 KHz sound, no SB16 support etc.)

The best chipsets in that respect were Opti's, which were directly hardware-compatible and you only needed a (non resident) utility to specify if you wanted SB Pro or Windows Sound System mode during boot or at anytime.

The worse were some ESS Audio Drive-based and some more obscure ones. PCI cards tend to rank with the latter in terms of functionality and compatibility, so yeah, expect having to use a special device driver, a particular memory configuration and geting quite low-quality sound. The best PCI "Sound Blasters" are some old Ensoniq sound cards, like the Ensoniq AudioPCI. Still uses drivers, but is the best of the bunch unless you use a real ISA soundcard (preferably Creative Labs or an Opti).

[Enjay]

Maes said:

so-so compatibility

Unfortunately, that was true "back in the day" for quite a few so-called "compatible" bits of hardware.

Sound cards, as you said, were one example. Graphics cards could be too and printers were another. Back when each individual programs accessed the printer directly (rather than having one driver for the OS as we have now), most programs came with a list of printers that they supported and (for each program) you had to pick which one on the list was correct for your printer. A number of printers on the market claimed to be "Epson compatible" or "HP Compatible" but I have yet to find a single one of these that actually performed properly when the setting that the printer was apparently compatible with was chosen (usually, they got the page sizes wrong and tried to print beyond the boundaries of the page or went on to a new page before they should).

And don't get me started on fiddling with hardware jumpers to try and get valid settings when you have a number of different accessory cards installed. >:(

[Belial]

Maes said:

(preferably Creative Labs or an Opti)

I had both an Opti931 and an Opti929, and the latter sounded much worse than the former, so I'd be careful about picking particular models as well.

[Maes]

Belial said:

I had both an Opti931 and an Opti929, and the latter sounded much worse than the former, so I'd be careful about picking particular models as well.

Well, the Opti chipsets were used by a wagonload of el-cheapo card manufacturers and can only be so bad or so good. The chip itself was decent (at least the 931, you had a fair SB-PRO compatible piece of hardware at a competitive prive) but the rest of the hardware (pre-amps, output circuitry, built-in 3D effects etc.) varied a lot from card to card. No digital outputs back then!

[VinceDSS]

For every old PC I put back together, I always end up throwing the so-called Sound Blaster compatible card and replacing it with a real Sound Blaster 16. They always had glitches or would lose the sound randomly in DOS Games.

Nothing is better than a real one, you can find em on ebay for real cheap (ISA and PCI). I suppose the AWE 32 and 64 would work well in DOS as well.

[bgraybr]

Do you think that's its possible to write DOS drivers for newer sound cards? If so, I wonder why no one ever did that. Someone else on another forum linked me to this thing. Might be possible to get DOS working on one of those since its open hardware, but it would still be difficult. The end result would be rewarding though- a portable device that plays all of my DOS games.

[VinceDSS]

Sound Blaster Live! has halfway decent DOS drivers. I used to run Doom in pure DOS with these.

[Aliotroph?]

We recently threw out an ISA SB16. I grew up using DOS all the time, but I don't like it much. Too much fiddling. It might have been cool if I had been into coding for it. There is something fun about coding for limited platforms. All my old games are more stable on DOSbox already and it's not even done.

[Maes]

bgraybr said:

Do you think that's its possible to write DOS drivers for newer sound cards? If so, I wonder why no one ever did that.

Some C-Media chipsets actually do come with freshly written DOS drivers (well...dating back to 2005, but an eternity compared to when DOS was all but phased out).

The best example of it is the CMI8738 chipset (the card linked to is just an example, it's practically present in all super-budget sound cards). In my case they were included in the bundled CD-ROM, along with Linux drivers.

Now, on the box of a similar one I have with the same chip, SB Pro (not SB16) compatibility and OPL3 support is boasted (see this thread about the OPL3 aspect), but you need DOS DRIVERS to make it work, it's not direct straight-to-hardware compatibility like the real ISA Sound Blasters OPTis had.

About ISA vs PCI, the AWE32/64 work just fine in DOS (at most you have to run an utility to switch between wavetable/FM for some games) and any game that does autodetection of Sound Blasters works fine with them, and also with OPTi 931 based cards, WITH NO DRIVERS LOADED AT ALL. That's the whole point.

However there's NO PCI CARD, not even by Creative Labs, that is as compatible without the use of drivers. And those "Sound Blaster PCI 128/512" cards by Creative Labs suck ass, they don't even have an FM chip (just a dumb 2-channel AC'97-like codec). They should not be called Sound Blasters at all, and they are not even hardware accelerated like the later Audigy line.

So bottom line: if you can, use an ISA card. If not, then a CMI8738, Ensoniq AudioPCI or a Yamaha Waveforce or similar is your best option, although OPL purists will shudder. There is also a so called "Sound Blaster 16 PCI" but it has nothing to do with the ISA card, it's just like a rebranded Ensoniq.

[Belial]

Or get a GUS, like I did a couple of weeks ago.

[VinceDSS]

Belial said:

Or get a GUS, like I did a couple of weeks ago.

I just glanced at eBay for these and they are darn expensive !!

Cheapest here, http://cgi.ebay.com/Gravis-UltraSound-Rev-2-4-Vintage-ISA-Sound-Card-/200439842624?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0

I guess I will pass on it and stick to my old SB16 ISA I got for $5 :)

Roland MT-32 's are quite a bit cheaper.

[Belial]

Well that's just some ridiculous auction. His other 3 GUS items have even more retarded prices.

I got a Primax clone for $10, lost an earlier auction for an original GUS Classic which went for ~$23.

[Maes]

Keep in mind that using ISA cards limits you to Pentium III and below. I only recall seeing some early/transitional Pentium IV-class mobos with ISA slots.

Of course, don't even think of ridiculous USB-to-ISA adapters: damn expensive AND incompatible. Not really stuff to line up about.

[Bloodshedder]

Maes said:

Keep in mind that using ISA cards limits you to Pentium III and below. I only recall seeing some early/transitional Pentium IV-class mobos with ISA slots.

Probably one of the latest boards to include an ISA slot would be the Biostar M7MIA (manufacturer's page), which is Socket 462 and would support up to an Athlon "Thoroughbred" 2600+ (2133 MHz, 133MHz bus [266MHz DDR]) and 2GB of unbuffered DDR266 (PC2100) SDRAM (according to the PDF manual, at least).

[GreyGhost]

I don't know how well ISA's supported by later chipsets such as the VIA Apollo Pro VT82C693A/82C596B. One such motherboard I owned tended to add static and noticeable dropouts to the audio of an ISA SB16, a problem that was only cured by switching to a PCI card.

[Maes]

VinceDSS said:

Sound Blaster Live! has halfway decent DOS drivers. I used to run Doom in pure DOS with these.

Yeah, only that is has nothing to do with the classic Sound Blasters at the hardware level. The "drivers", if any, will probably just offer emulated compatibility with digital sound (no FM hardware).